Rick Robins said:
My question(s) in the original post was kindly aimed at folks who claim they want to be better players, not to discuss anybody's art. Jeff's commentary to me seems to be the plain & basic truth. If you want to become a better player, find a good teacher who teaches factual elements that make up harmony, melody, and rhythm."
I just cant wrap my head around why one would pay for lessons yet deny this as the truth in favor of "snake oil lessons" or as Snarf said I try to tell them this is what you need to know they ignore him in favor of being shown how to play songs.
Also could anybody explain how did the New Methods come to be?? Like "Groove Lessons" Did Bootsy, Rocco Prestia or Paul Jackson take Groove Lessons.? How did TAB, a 1500's era Lute notation, crop back up & take the place of written music for guitar & bass guitar?
You seem to be getting confused between the Academic approach to learning Music and the Vocational approach to learning music. The two are as different in the same way there is the business of music and the Music Business.
We live in a modern society with modern values and ideas. In education these days it is the pupil, not the teacher or school in charge it seems.
As I said in an earlier post the student is not qualified to decide what or what not they need to learn. So what we end up with in-effective education with in-effective qualifications, and the people with these qualifications go on to teach others and so it goes around.
In the era that I grew up in ( and Jeff ) there was nothing but a music education so there were no options to learn parts of it. Now we have a whole business develop to cater for that gap between the Vocational and the Academic. This is the part where Jeff failed to pick up on, and as such he attacked it rather than embrace it. In doing so he marginalised his opinions and worth.
As we have seen here on TB and as is the case where ever he goes his message gets lost in the politics of " being Jeff Berlin", the negative of what he says gets more attention than the positive. That negative is probley maybe 1% of what he has to say, yet that 1% applies to practically all players of all levels in what is considered the Music Business
So to new or younger players the thinking is " if he is wrong about that then he can be wrong about other things he says" rather than thinking "well if one of the greatest bass players ever to have lived and a walking talking legend can show me better ways to play....I will listen." But to most people outside the bass world or new to it they have never heard of him, or if they have it's the negative things he says. I mean Jeff say bad metronome, but Vic Wooten and others say good metronome and show how to use the metronome to good effect, so who will the believe?
Think about it, if a student comes to me to learn to play and he wants to use tabs to learn to groove to a metronome and I say no, then I am sending him away to find someone who will.......To find someone who may or not know any better than that.
But if I say " sure I will " and build a rapore with the student then I can show him a much better way to learn and as such become a better player because he can see and trust in what I say and do.
I can show them the advantages of what I know and was taught as a basic music education, compared to what is being offered today as a basic music education. It is easier being on the inside looking out than being on the outside looking in.
On that point there is a blur between an Academic and the Vocational in as much as what form it takes. So do we learn all the facts firs,t then find practical applications for it, as in the Academic?
Or do we learn the practical applications first then look for the facts about it later?
The one thing we do know is that all those that are learning from all these "snake oil lessons" may or may not be inspired to move on to formal lessons to better understand what they have learned. If they do they may or may not find what they are looking for. There is no guarantee that either way will give us what we want, so we take that leap of faith that what we do will stand us in good stead.
In discussions with Ed Friedland about why there are tabs and notation in his books, it is simply that the publishers want them because it widens the scope and marketing range of the books.
Simple idea really, having no tabs sell less books, so the information reaches less. Put tabs in alongside SN and now it reaches more and those that use standard notation have access to the information because it is being subsidised by all those that bought the book for tab.
The info is the same but supported by two different formats in order to learn.
And that is really the point of learning, not how it is taught or written, but the point is it gets learned and understood.
